


Night On Earth

by MissEllaVation



Category: U2 (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:20:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23227741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissEllaVation/pseuds/MissEllaVation
Summary: A night of mother hopping sugar popping dropping rock and roll. Somewhere in Europe, 1998. Alternating POV.
Relationships: Bono/The Edge (U2)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 19





	Night On Earth

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my first Pop-era fic. I must admit I find this time period hard to write about. I lived through it, of course. In America, the excitement of 80’s “college rock” morphing into 90’s “alternative” had just come to an ignoble end. I don’t even want to talk about what came next. Suffice it to say I woke up one day and heard Kid Rock on the radio.
> 
> But I digress. Some of us who were approaching 30, and who feared losing interest in music entirely, thought our salvation might lie in techno and electronica. U2 certainly embraced it—at least for a few songs on Pop. I don’t know why I’m writing all this, except to say that I always associate Pop (an album I loved then and love even more now) with being on the brink of adulthood and watching the world become a little bit darker and less fun. I guess that’s where this fic comes in—though, as always, it’s about a love that transcends any particular record or year.
> 
> I read somewhere that the song “Please,” a startling take on sectarian violence, grew out of a situation in which an inebriated Edge was crawling around on the floor, and a (perhaps) less-inebriated Bono was begging him to “get up off [his] knees.” I don’t know if there’s any truth to this. But because we usually see Edge as the responsible, paternal “person A” to Bono’s childlike, impulsive “person B,” I thought I’d run with something along those lines.
> 
> This is a work of fiction. I do not own Bono and Edge, unfortunately.
> 
> Big love and thanks to likeamadonna. She is sustenance in this crazy timeline.

**Bono:**

The D.J. has somehow got hold of our “Pop Muzik” remix. The really long version. He hunches over his deck, right headphone bulging out of his blonde dreadlocked head like a tumor, left headphone dangling over his shoulder. He raises his free hand to salute me, and everyone pivots toward where I sit, at a table of honor against a black wall, in a welter of strobe lights and chaos.

Of course the D.J. could not possibly understand or even imagine what that song does to me at this point—a Pavlovian response; a jolt of adrenaline that solidifies into a cold lump in my stomach. Time to get up, time to go out there, time to face the crowd. I find myself clearing my throat, reaching back instinctively to pull my hood up over my face. But I don’t have a hood. This is just an ordinary black t-shirt.

No one here expects me to stand up on the table and sing “Mofo.” But people  _ are _ gawking, so I sit up a little taller, telescope my neck, put out my chin. They can’t see my eyes anyway. A smattering of applause is lost in the techno throb. I raise my glass to the room and then put it back down.

I am completely sober. An unusual condition for a night like this, but it happens. I did want to be here, and I did want to lose myself in the sound and in the skin. But something changed, Edge. I mean, it was you, Edge. You went in full-tilt, leaving me here at the table, and I thought someone might have to protect you. You’ve done that for me so many times. So I decided to keep a clear head. 

But with a clear head comes that old feeling of being twelve or thirteen and showing up at a friend’s birthday party, one where all the other kids go to a different school. And you’re standing there watching and feeling out of sorts until you figure out how to make yourself the center of attention. (Making yourself the center of attention is not optional; it is mandatory.) You might step right up to the prettiest girl in the room, who is encircled by all the other girls of varying levels of prettiness. Or maybe you choose one who’s only middlingly pretty. Either way you create a squall of messages telegraphed from one pair of eyes to the next, and a chorus of subsonic “oh jaysises.”

Or maybe you just put a box on your head, or waltz with the birthday boy’s cocker spaniel. Whatever you decide, it always works and it makes everything okay.

That’s what it’s like, being me. Being sober in a trendy club, in a medium-sized European city, at 2 o’clock in the morning, at the end of the 90s. No one knows I’m sober. Everyone assumes otherwise. Therefore I am free with a terrible freedom. If I choose to, I can wreak havoc with malice aforethought.

Where are you, Edge?

Something has changed in the years between ZooTV and this tour. Some sense of desperation has crept into the nightlife as we hurtle toward the millennium. A few years ago, the girls who worked in the clubs would sit down with you and talk in great detail about the music they liked, or the music they didn’t like. Didn’t they do that, Edge? I think they did. Some of them had such refined taste they were on a par with Christgau and Bangs.

Now it seems they couldn’t care less. They just size you up: Oh, you’re famous, you have money. They fawn over you but their eyes are somewhere else. Their clothes are less substantial, if such a thing is possible. But really. One false move and there’s a breast in your face, there’s three-quarters of an arse. And they’re so much younger. Or maybe they’re not. Maybe we’re just older. Of course we are.

I don’t want it. I don’t want this empty lap dance. 

But I do. But I don’t.

I see you, Edge. I’m keeping an eye on you. Usually it’s the other way around, but not tonight. I see you snaking your way through the room, slowly, your trendy flimsy polyester shirt unbuttoned almost to your navel, your sleazy tight pimp trousers. The lights bleach your skin pure white. You’re like a pen-and-ink cartoon of a gay caballero. I have to remind myself, “That’s just Edge. It’s just Edge. The nice scrawny boy from Malahide with the fluffy hair who carries so many textbooks he has to put one of those geek straps around them.”

Tonight you are  _ quite _ wasted, and at some point I will have to pry you out of whatever circumstances you end up in. For Morleigh’s sake, and for mine.

You’re dancing to Orbital, the Chemical Brothers, the Crystal Method. Your slim little cowboy hips are gyrating madly; I can’t take my eyes off them. Good thing I’m wearing my shades, huh? I could use an extra pair for my cock. You’re surrounded by young women in tiny tops and great baggy trousers, their hair all done up in pastel-colored bunches, like eight-year-old girls from outer space. But we must hope that these young women are at least a decade older than that.

Come back to me, Edge. Come back to me now. I feel like an empty space without you.

Here at our table, the avant garde filmmaker leans across me to whisper something to the controversial author. I’ve seen pictures of myself gazing adoringly at each of these men at one time or another—the big brothers, the surrogate dads who think I’m a cut above the average rock star and therefore heap blessings on my buzzed head. But I’ve stepped outside of myself tonight, and I can’t get back in. Everything,  _ everything _ feels staged. I mean, I guess, everything  _ is  _ staged. If you think about it too much.

You’re still in the middle of the dance floor, shifting your weight from foot to foot. Your shirt has slipped from your left shoulder. Oh Edge. I see myself fixing it for you, feel the slick fabric under my fingertips while my knuckles brush against the side of your neck. 

And time turns almost imperceptibly from late night to early morning, the only real marker being the chilled-out music. Portishead, Massive Attack. Slower stuff, with lyrics. Tracey Thorn’s voice, like a warm hand on a sore head.

_ Sometimes you look so small, need some shelter  
_ _ Just runnin' round and round, Helter Skelter  
_ _ And I've leaned on you for years  
_ _ Now you can lean on me  
_ _ And that's more than love,   
_ _ That's the way it should be _

The song is called “Protection.” Time to frog-march you out of here and put you in the limo.

**Edge**

Suddenly the spinning stops.

“How’d I get here?”

“You’re okay, Edge.”

I pull myself up to look around. We’re in a car parked on the side of the road—the same road that brought us here. I guess it’ll take us from this funky warehouse district back into the older, nicer bit of this city, back to where the fancy hotels are. I drop my head down on your shoulder. At least the limo is nice and cool. 

“Where is Milos, the driver?”

“Milos the driver has gone for a piss, Edge.”

My foot drums against the floor. “I’m so tired but I can’t stay still.”

“You’re full of controlled substances, love.”

“Oh fuck. Why did you let me? Listen, this is weird. This is really weird. I meant to mention it to you yesterday, or tonight—but Milos the driver looks  _ just _ like my weird cousin Bryn in Porthcawl.”

“Would you ever shut up now, The Edge.” 

You sound super-Irish when you’re tired, Bono. It makes me smile. Your arm enfolds me just like an angel’s wing. But it’s true: Milos really does look like cousin Bryn in Porthcawl, as I recall him, standing outside the Tandoor takeaway on the Promenade in blinding white sunlight, with his shifty brown eyes and a unibrow even thicker than mine. And that’s why Milos the driver makes me hungry for curry. 

I’m not sure if I’ve said this out loud or not.

“Where are we going, Bono?”

“Back to the hotel, love.”

“Are you sure?”

“Are you getting paranoid now?”

“No, but why is the car going straight up?”

“It isn’t. We are very much on earth, in a car that is moving forward along a flat paved road.”

I know you wouldn’t lie to me but I wish I could believe you, because I can feel us racing vertically through space and time, and the lights are flashing past the windows like when the Millennium Falcon goes to warp speed. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“But are you  _ sure _ ?” I hear myself laugh, too loud.

“Edge, you’re not very good at this.”

“Not very good at what?” Your smile is a little white triangle in the dark. You are so beautiful. You are so beautiful, Bono. Let me touch your face. Please don’t let go of me.

“At being a dissipated, fin-de-siecle poofter.”

“Say that again.”

“Why?” 

“Because maybe it can be the title of our next album. What did you call me? A desiccated  _ Fine Gael _ pooper?”

“Sure. We’re due to make an album with a long title, I guess.”

I count on my fingers.  _ Pop. War. Boy. Bore _ . No, not  _ Bore. _ “We’re never done one before.”

“No, we haven’t. Maybe it’ll change our luck.”

“What’s wrong with our luck?” The limo lurches, and lights swing past the windows as if they are something solid and oily, dense, like those magnetic ball toys that lawyers keep on their desks. “Christ, I feel sick.”

“Should I tell Weird Cousin Bryn to pull over?”

“No. Just hold on to me.”

Time is not working right. I’m not sure how we get from the car to the hotel lobby, from the lobby to my room, though I can  _ almost _ remember, the way you remember a dream, the feeling of the lift shooting up too quickly, the fear that I’d be flattened against the floor. But you are standing there, seemingly unaffected by the sudden gravitational shift. I think you have superpowers, Bono. Yes, why have I never realized this before?

Before I know it I’m on my back, and this is the most comfortable bed in the world, isn’t it? This is wonderful, like lying on millions of layers of candy floss. If only I could get my body to stop thinking it’s running a marathon.

“How much ecstasy did you take, Edge?”

“Not that much.”

“Did you take anything else?”

I shrug.

“Drink this water.”

You hold a glass to my lips. The water is cold and tastes of indigo. I can feel it forming a little lake inside me. This is good. The earth is mostly water and so am I. Soon I’ll be solid again. Meanwhile you sit on the edge of my bed, bent toward me, watching me. Your pointy little face is so tender. 

“Don’t go, B.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“You have a streak of glitter on your cheek. Just here.”

“Do I?”

“Yes. It’s blue and silver. Where did it come from?”

“Someone must have brushed against me with their tits. Our lungs are probably half-full of body glitter after tonight.”

“Oh, imagine that—everyone breathing in, exhaling little clouds of glitter.”

“That wouldn’t be very good, Edge, I don’t think.”

“But no, Bono, I think an angel must have touched your cheek with her finger. That’s what it is. Only she should have put it here, in this little indentation that goes from your nose to the end of your chin—it even goes through your lips, amazing.”

“Oh, the  _ indentation _ again. Yes, my face is a wonder to behold, The Edge.”

“It is.” I run my palm along your unshaven chin, then down your neck, then back up through the velvety nap of your hair. The way the dim light makes long shadow-shapes of your eyes, shapes that are something like tadpoles. “How could anyone not love you?”

  
  
**Bono**

How could anyone not love  _ you _ ? My pretty Edge, lying like a fallen angel on the bed. One arm hanging off the mattress, long fingers trailing on the floor. 

You’ve gone so still. I lean close to make sure you’re breathing. It’s silly, but I don’t know exactly what chemicals are chasing each other around your bloodstream. 

But your slim chest rises and falls, evenly. Behold, you are beautiful. You are beautiful the way a gothic cathedral is beautiful, the way the Chrysler Building is beautiful. And like that majestic building, you don’t even know how beautiful you are.

“Edge.”

“Mm.”

“Beautiful Edge.” You smile at this with your eyes still closed. Under my lips, your forehead is a little damp, but cool. You are all forehead, and cheekbone, and mustache, and that incredible superhuman jaw, and there’s that one little dimple in your left cheek. The glitter-angel has been remiss, failing to brush against that dimple. I shall kiss it.

“Stay with me, Bono. Right here. Here.”

“Okay, love.” I place myself astride your hips and am suddenly so overwhelmed with desire that for a few seconds I’m lost for words. I lean down to unbutton your damp shirt. “You were a bit of a wild-man tonight, but now you’re safe with me. We don’t have a show tomorrow night, but we  _ do _ have one the next night. So you are going to behave yourself, starting now.”

“Now?”

“Yes, now. Kindly take your hands off my arse so I can get this abominable shirt off you.”

“No, I think I’ll keep them there.”

“Suit yourself.” I can’t help but move a little against you. 

“Ah.” You open your eyes slowly. “Want you.”

“You’re still high.”

“So?”

“Sew buttons.”

Your face does some interesting things while you try to work out what I’ve just said. This gives me time to work your shirt off and throw it on the floor, then get my fingers into the lacy black hair on your chest. I’m tired and I want to lie down there—curl my whole self up on your chest like a kitten or an infant. 

“Sweetheart.”

“Edge, you are so fucking crucial to the Rube-Goldberg device that is my life.”

“Sorry?”

“You are essential. You are obligatory. You are vaster than empires and more slow.”

“That last thing doesn’t sound like a compliment.”

“What I’m trying to say is,  _ you’re _ the one who’s supposed to be looking after  _ my  _ drunk and disorderly arse. I don’t mind switching places now and then, but let’s not make a habit of it. You’re supposed to be the dad.”

“The dad. And what does that make you?”

“I’m the mum. Also the baby.” I don’t even know what I’m on about. You’re still holding me by the hips, moving me this way and that. “Let go of me now so I can get you out of these vulgar retro pimp slacks that suit you so well.”

You oblige. I slide your trousers down and watch your body emerge as if from a chrysalis. Don’t know how a short-arse like you can manage to look so long and lean. It’s not fair—I have to pretty much go hungry all the time to be as thin as I am right now—but it’s alright. You like me. What else matters? You like me sitting over you like this, looking down at you. Your eyes are roving over my shoulders and down my chest and you’re getting delightfully hard.

“You’re fucking gorgeous,” you murmur. “Kiss me.”

What else can I do but comply? I’d comply if you sent me out looking for ice, or if you asked me to jump out the window. 

Your mouth is a little dry—nightclub mouth—but not for long. I love, I will always love, this mingling of our flesh, this simplest form of penetration. You into me, me into you, breathing into each other. I insist on prolonging this kiss until I feel your grip on me tighten, your body writhing, pushing up against me. This is when I pull away and sit back so I can look down at you.

“Jesus, Bono. That expression on your face.”

“Yeah?”

“How do the girls in the front row not die?”

“You think I look at them the way I’m looking at you?”

“I know you do. You can’t help it. You look down your monumental nose at them like you’re in complete control…and they look up at you…”

“Yeah?”

“And they think about what your stupid little sweaty body would feel like, all over them…”

“And do you think about that too?”

“I don’t have to think about it, do I. You’re sitting right on my cock.”

“So I am, The Edge.”

“Bono.”

Your hands creep up my back, slide around to my chest. I’ve still got my clothes on. Maybe that’s why you think I’m in complete control. I don’t feel that way, but I’m happy to keep your illusions intact, if that’s what you want. You do make an apt metaphor for the crowd—staring up at me, open-mouthed, undulating. 

“What do you want, Edge?”

“You.” You clutch at me, rise up to meet me. “Just you. Come on.”

“Wait. Let go. Please.”

“Why should I…oh.”

“Yeah. Big in-control rock star is gonna suck you off, okay?”

“Oh.”

You utter not another word as I take you in; you know better than to interrupt. Beautiful Edge, hard Edge, horny Edge dancing with your harem of space-girls, hot Edge, delicious Edge, you who never break a sweat, but if you do, your sweat smells of sandalwood and lemon, or like a day at the beach, like our summer of love. 

“Like that. Just like that. Please, babe.”

Yes Edge, tell me what to do. Keep your hand on my head. Guide me. Your instructions, whatever their direction. I love you. I love the taste of you. I love the effort, the rhythm. I love to feel you at the back of my throat. To hear your voice drop to a low growl. 

“God Bono. Nobody…”

That’s right, nobody. Nobody else could. Not like me. Don’t think about space-girls, strippers, starlets, waitresses. Just me. Just me. I’m the one sucking your cock, feeling every part of you with my lips, my tongue, the roof of my mouth. I’m the one making you come. Come on now. It’s alright. Hang onto my head, my neck, my ear. Beat me up. It’s fine. Come, darling.

And you do. You come gorgeously. Deep, salty, primordial. Edge. My beautiful caveman. 

I savor the moment, as if I’ve accomplished something really difficult, resting my head on your belly while you stroke my hair.

“Bono.”

“Yeah.”

“I want to…let me…”

I can’t help but laugh as your voice trails off. “You want to reciprocate? I appreciate the thought but you’re obviously on the verge of passing out.”

“No I’m…”

“You had a rough night, The Edge.” I plant a kiss on your damp belly.

“Self-inflicted, sweetheart.”

“True, but rough all the same.”

“Come here. Under the thingy.”

“The duvet.”

“Whatever. Get under it.”

I hear and obey. You pull me close and I loll against your slim, warm body. Just where I want to be. Nothing else is necessary. For now.

“Is that the bastard sun coming through the blinds?”

“Afraid so, The Edge.”

“Christ. Well, thank you, Bono.”

“For what?”

“For everything. Getting me home safe. For being so unselfish.”

Rather than answer, I pretend I’m falling asleep. Because the truth is that everything I’ve done over the last eight hours, from abstaining from drink to making you come, was done out of selfishness. 

I didn’t want you to end up anywhere else but here, with anyone else but me.


End file.
